How to Configure the NI PCI-1405 with C to capture NTSC

[leonree]

Hi,

I'm using an NI PCI-1405 to capture images from different ultrasound machines using IMAQ (v3.5.1).  The application is to create a simple interface for some researchers I am working with to capture images from different ultrasound images without them having to know how to configure the capture card to suit the various ultrasound they are hooking up to.

My application (in LabWindows/CVI v8.0) is progressing well when the video signal is PAL but when it is NTSC I don't seem to be able to capture any images.  If I use MAX 4.0 I can snap and grab images for both PAL and NTSC images.  I then close MAX and launch my CVI application.  From what I've found it appears that the settings that are configured using MAX stay in the hardware and get used by my application (please let me know if this understanding is not correct).  As mentioned, my application captures fine in PAL (I'm using the ring approach to capturing images into buffers) but when I get I get to NTSC I can't detect any video signal and it times out.  Is there a particular IMAQ function or attribute I should use in my code to tell the PCI-1405 to capture either PAL or NTSC.  I've looked through the IMAQ attributes but can't find anything in the documentation about being able to set the PCI-1405 to expect PAL or NTSC.

Thanks, Leon

[CMal]

Leon,

You should not need to modify your code when switching between NTSC and PAL.  As long as you specify the format in MAX, then click "Save", your code should run normally.  One thing to try would be to run one of the IMAQ shipping examples, typically found in the "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\CVI80\samples\IMAQ\" folder.  I suggest running HLSnap, which is the simplest example.  This will ensure that there is nothing else in your code that is causing problems.  Please let me know if this helps.

Chris M.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[leonree]

Sorry for the long delay in response.  Seeing it hasn't been an issue for the last 11 months I hadn't thought much about it.

My goal was to have our application configure all settings for the card so that we knew exactly what they are.  We want to avoid the situation where someone plays around in MAX and changes something that will affect the operation of our application.  This is to do with certification of our application so that the results are not adjustable by the wrong people.

After my digging around, maybe the only way to keep things locked down is to hope certain "security" features of the OS keep things safe.

[yaHeard]

Hello leonree,

You should be able to set all the writable parameters from MAX in LabWindows/CVI by using the imgSetAttribute and imgSetCameraAttribute functions.  You can get more information about these functions and their syntax by viewing the NI-IMAQ Function Reference Help located in the following directory:

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\NI-IMAQ\Docs

I believe it is named NIIMAQFunctionReference.chm.